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Lexington gave me a narrow look and bent over it, its tiny body still flapping around on the ground in some kind of fit or frenzy. He had dark stubble on his handsome face, and he looked bad tempered and out of sorts. Well, what else was new? He put his hand over the little bird’s body, and the squawking and wild movements stopped.
He glanced back up at me, his eyes glittering with anger. “You mean you turned it into a monster.”
“What? I…No, I-I only tried to…” I shuddered and struggled out of Brandon’s grip to stand on my own two feet and face the big Alpha frowning down at me. “I found it on the ground when I went to relieve myself, so it must have fallen out of the nest. It was dead, or almost, so I tried to help.”
“How’s that? By using necromancy? So you admit you lied when you told me over and over that you had no magic.”
“Well, I don’t have any, but I thought…it occurred to me how nice it would be if Ididhave some. And if I could really manipulate things around me.”
“I see. And your first thought was to turn a dying baby bird into some kind of evil birdcreaturefrom hell?”
“No! That’s not how it happened at all. You’re just being an ass!”
I turned and stormed back to the fire, giving them all my back. Or at least I tried to storm, but the stupid cape tripped me up, and I would have fallen on my face if Brandon hadn’t grabbed my arm and helped to right me. I could feel my face flaming with heat and as soon as he set me back on my feet, I held up the hem and flounced my way over to the fire, plopping down in front of it. “Flouncing” being a relative term. I tried to anyway but kept tripping over the stupid cape. Lexington had certainly known what he was doing with that horrible thing. He couldn’t have hampered my movement any better if he’d hobbled me.
The four of them followed me more slowly, talking softly among themselves. I was shaken, because how in the hell had that happened anyway? No matter what my intentions had been,thatshouldn’t have been the result. How had things gone so wrong? Worst of all, had I killed that poor little bird? Or at least hastened its death? I was horrified by the idea, but I vowed never to show my feelings to any of these hateful, judgy Alphas again.
They came back to the fire and Wyatt began poking at it with a stick. “I need to get more wood if we want something hot to eat,” he said to the group at large, I guess, and Lexington, who was standing beside me, nodded.
“Fine. Unless the prince here wants to start a bigger fire for us just by using hismind. You’ll have to show us your techniques, Rory. I’ve never seen ‘warlock mind control’ before, and I confess I’m agog to see it.”
Fuck youtrembled on my lips, and tried to force its way out, but I swallowed down the words and didn’t say them. I contented myself with giving him the evilest look I could muster.
He smirked at Brandon and Asher and then back at me, but I was studiously ignoring him.
“How about it, princeling? Would you like to show us how you did it? It was only a baby bird, but perhaps I shouldn’t wait to bind your powers. Perhaps you’re stronger than I gave you credit for being.”
I’d like to show him, all right. I wished I could do something flamboyant and dramatic, and it would serve him right if I could. If I had the power to do it, I’d start a fire that would blaze up ten feet high in the air, so hot that it would singe off his eyebrows. I gave him another look and then focused my attention back on the fire. I sent that ill wish right at the flames with all my might.
The fire in front of us suddenly flamed up twenty feet high in the air with a loud roar. The horses screamed in terror and one of them broke his lead and ran off into the forest. The flames were only a momentary thing—and they certainly didn’t singe off anybody’s eyebrows, but the campfire did flare up way too high and right on cue. And the flames had been an ominous shade of blue. Very weird.
The whole thing lasted for only a few seconds, but I got the supreme satisfaction of seeing it startle Lexington so badly that he scrambled to jump back and fell on his delectable, muscular ass. Brandon did too. Asher held up a hand toward it like I’d seen Lexington do and only he and Wyatt remained on their feet, though they stumbled back a few steps. They both got a look of pure amazement on their faces, as they stared first at the fire and then back at me. Wyatt recovered first, running over to the horses to quiet them and find the one who’d run off. Brandon stood up, giving me a surprised look and as for Lexington—he glared at me in open-mouthed shock, tinged with absolute outrage. I knew I was in for it then, and I braced myself.
Chapter Seven
Lexington
“Of all the half-witted, irresponsible,wickedthings to do!” I cried, taking a step toward him and pulling back my hand, getting ready to send something nasty right back at him. Maybe some mud to splatter in his face or an entire bucket of cold water falling down on his head. Then I’d let him shiver and shudder his way through the entire night with nothing dry to wear—let him freeze in those wet clothes and see how anxious he was then to get into a battle of magic.
He held up his hands as if to ward me off, and I scoffed at him and forced his hands behind his back with a single wave of my hand. He gasped and cried out as he struggled to get free.
At least I’d proven to myself what a little liar he was, claiming not to know anything at all about his mother’s history or the fact that he was himself a warlock. I wanted badly to show him my own strength. I wanted to teach him a lesson, to turn him over my knee and spank him, to strip his clothes off him right here and now and fall on top of him, burying my cock deeply inside him and fucking him until he begged me for mercy.
Brandon laid a hand on my arm, and I could feel his much calmer energy washing over me. Brandon was an Alpha, but he’d always been more like a beta, in a way. He was calm and thoughtful like they could be, and I was a much better person when he was around me. I dropped my hand and turned away from Rory, releasing my hold on him.
I was appalled at my anger. My passions for this prince ran high, and I was having trouble controlling them. It had to be that damned slick of his affecting me so badly. Today, we needed to find a place for him to bathe. I knew that until I could bite him and make love to him, I wouldn’t be able to think rationally around him and his delicious scent. His pheromones were working overtime and making me crazier by the minute. He smelled so delicious, and it was so tempting to me I could barely keep my hands off him.
“It’s that scent—like peaches,” I told Brandon softly. “It’s making me crazy.”
“Peaches? No, it’s like strawberries, when you first bite into one, ripe and delicious.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. How was he scenting something different?
Wyatt overheard us and said, “You’re both wrong. It’s cake. Chocolate cake just out of the oven.”
Gods, did he somehow smell like whatever appealed most to any given person? That could be dangerous.
This warlock was posing an extreme danger to my pack. If he kept clouding our minds, we could even begin fighting over him, and that would be disastrous. It was also possible this was all coming through our bond, and the others were just reacting to my feelings for Rory. I took a deep breath and tried to regain some control. The first thing I needed to do was bind his powers and remove any threat, because I had a feeling we were all reacting to that too. Unusual for us to feel that from an omega, but this was no ordinary omega—after all, he was the son of Vesper, one of the most powerful warlocks who ever lived.
